Yale-NUS announces first Vice President of Engagement

16 April 2019

VP of Engagement to create more opportunities for purposeful community engagement and the building of strategic partnerships

Yale-NUS College will appoint Dr Trisha Craig, Dean of International & Professional Experience and Senior Lecturer at Yale-NUS, as Vice President of Engagement from 15 April 2019. Dr Craig will be responsible for the College’s initiatives and activities in the areas of external engagement, alumni affairs and summer programming while continuing to head the Centre for International & Professional Experience (CIPE), which is responsible for co-curricular programmes, study abroad, career services, graduate and professional school advising, and leadership training at the College. As VP of Engagement, Dr Craig will focus on creating opportunities for purposeful engagement and building strategic partnerships with key stakeholders within Singapore, the region and the world at large.

In her current role helming CIPE, Dr Craig is responsible for engagement with partner institutions, employers, alumni, guest speakers and leadership content providers. With the new appointment, even more focus will be placed on life-long learning and expanding CIPE’s support programmes for Yale-NUS alumni so they continue to have access to more networking opportunities, knowledge exchange and skills training, even after they have left the College. For example, alumni are invited to participate in career development workshops, access online career resources and tap on the CIPE career development advisors who are able to provide insights on careers in various industries. Alumni who are keen to pursue postgraduate education can also approach CIPE for graduate and professional school application guidance. In addition, Dr Craig is looking forward to building up more international networking nodes by leveraging the numerous overseas opportunities at the College to connect with alumni living abroad.

At the same time, a key focus of the VP of Engagement’s office will be to build relationships with the wider community. To facilitate this, the VP of Engagement’s office is looking into organising more institutional events such as talks and seminars that will allow our academic community to share their knowledge with the community at large. Concurrently, the office will explore forging more extensive partnerships with academic partners and other stakeholders, working with leading faculty and industry practitioners to identify and create new experiential learning opportunities. Leveraging the College’s geographical location in Singapore, these experiential learning programmes, known as “Learning Across Boundaries” or LABs, often involve many of the countries that make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Lao, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Singapore. LABs are typically led by faculty or industry practitioners who share their scholarship with students outside of the classroom and enable them to explore themes of the curriculum in a broader context. Faculty can also take the opportunity to connect with fellow academics in the region, hence deepening their research network and encouraging collaborations on a range of issues vital to the growth and development of the region, from politics and security to art to air pollution.

Several planned LABs that explore the ASEAN region through a variety of topics, ranging from public health to journalism and creative arts, will take place during the semester break. In May 2019, Yale Greenberg World Fellow[1] and Journalist Vincent Ni will be leading a LAB to Cambodia in the form of a journalism workshop where students will examine ASEAN’s future by reporting on China’s growing geopolitical and economic influence in the region. Yale University’s School of Public Health’s Associate Professor of Epidemiology Kaveh Khoshnood will also lead a LAB for students to learn about public health challenges faced by refugees and health professionals in Malaysia. Another group of students will embark on a documentary photography masterclass in August 2019 and present their portfolios at the Obscura Festival in Penang, Malaysia, which will showcase works from esteemed photographers in the Southeast Asian region, adding to the arts vibrancy of the area.

“Yale-NUS College is committed to nurturing young leaders who have rich skills in critical thinking and adaptability as well as a strong ethic of service, enabling them to make a difference in their chosen endeavours. We also aim to make continuous contributions to the community by sharing our research expertise and knowledge to address major global challenges of the day. For the past four years, Dr Craig has been a key driver of our CIPE programmes and deeply involved in building up our stakeholder relations through her office’s wide range of international programmes. With greater synergies formed through the new VP of Engagement office, I am confident that Dr Craig and her team will enhance strategic partnerships to enable us to bring even more positive impact to the community at large,” said President of Yale-NUS College, Professor Tan Tai Yong.

Since helming CIPE, Dr Craig has been instrumental in leading the team to establish numerous new partnerships with peer academic institutions and industry. These relationships nurture student competencies in various fields, such as research, global strategy and leadership through programmes for student mobility, summer study, research and internships abroad. The partnerships have contributed greatly to the growing global status of Yale-NUS College. In Academic Year 2018/2019, for example, the College hosted over 60 exchange students from 26 institutions in 11 countries, more than double the preceding year.

“I am delighted to take on this new role and I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance the College’s efforts to create unparalleled opportunities for our students to benefit from global exposure and experiential learning. With more purposeful engagement with our key stakeholders within Singapore, the region and the world, I believe we can implement more targeted initiatives to enable our students and alumni to grow and thrive, while contributing to the wider community as well,” said Dr Craig.

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[1] The Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program is Yale University’s signature global leadership development initiative and a core element of Yale’s ongoing commitment to internationalisation. Each year, the University invites a group of exemplary mid-career professionals from a wide range of fields and countries for an intensive four-month period of academic enrichment and leadership training.